


dog teeth

by nicobutt



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Dubious Consent, Emotional Trauma, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Forced Feminization, Horror, M/M, Mental Illness, Psychological Horror, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:00:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23832025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicobutt/pseuds/nicobutt
Summary: Settling into the shadows of the asylum, festering and pulsing like an infection beneath the cracked and bloody halls, Waylon can feel the pull of something sinister. Something hungers beneath his feet and it calls to him. It yearns for him. And Waylon is finding it harder to stay away.
Relationships: Eddie Gluskin/Waylon Park
Comments: 10
Kudos: 160





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It's strongly advised to read 'Outlast: The Murkoff Account' before moving forward.

_He should have listened._  
  
"We'll be okay without Murkoff, Way," Lisa remarked, regarding her husband with a sobering gaze from her tired green eyes as he pulled on his shoes. She was curled into the corner of the couch with Ethan, their youngest at eight months, who was grabbing at the thin gold chain around his mother's neck and mumbling incoherence. Jonathan, four, was napping quietly on her lap.  
  
Waylon gave a weak smile as he looked around their home. This, he realized, was because of Murkoff.  
  
He had been working for Murkoff under Michelle Haas, one of the company’s I.T. specialists, for almost two years. He had handled her assignment management, appointments, and took on smaller projects while she dealt personally with the executives and their endeavors. He saw little of the higher ups, but Haas often came back from their meetings quiet and apprehensive to continue work. Waylon realized that maybe Murkoff was taking a toll on her, and with the baby coming along she didn't need the added stress. But she would give a smile and a wave of her hand and tell him not to worry, everything was fine. Those days she'd treat him to lunch and he'd put it to the back of his mind until it simmered there, almost forgotten.  
  
Then she hadn't come back to work.  
  
Slowly but surely staff members were relocated to separate divisions within Murkoff, while Waylon hung back under Jeremy Blair's instruction, taking over Haas' workload but still keeping his usual distance. It ended up leading to a lot of long hours away from home, and Blaire was soon to take notice.  
  
He came up to proposition Waylon on one of those late nights as Waylon stared off into the endless white of his computer screen, grabbing hold of him from behind with his startlingly warm hands smoothing out the wrinkles of Waylon's sweater without being asked to. Blaire's hands lingered uncomfortably long at his shoulders, but Waylon shrugged them off as Jeremy leaned close, his blue eyes piercing.  
  
Two weeks spent on site at Mount Massive Asylum, located deep within the mountains of Lake County. With advanced pay.  
  
Waylon had looked over to Haas' empty desk, then. She'd been gone for three months. Probably well into motherhood by now, right? She had seemed anxious about the pregnancy but Waylon assured her that she'd be well. Even without a father in the picture, a man in which she chose to never speak of, Haas was more than capable.  
  
Waylon had his own family to think of. Bills, student loans, and insurance payments were piling up, and him and Lisa were barely keeping their heads above water. He'd be stupid to refuse.  
  
And Waylon had come to understand that perhaps his obedience was too easily bought.  
  
 _He should have turned back._  
  
Waylon stood up, grabbing his overnight bag from the floor. "It's just a few weeks. You probably won't even know I'm gone."  
  
Lisa gave a roll of her eyes, smiling. "Hardly. Two weeks feels far too long."  
  
"But I'll be back before you know it." He leaned down, planting a soft kiss against her lips in which Ethan diligently smacked away. Waylon laughed, smacking a kiss against the side of Ethan’s tousled shock of brown hair in defiance. Jonathan was stirring awake below them, annoyed and grumbling.  
  
"I'm leaving, kid. You wanna see me off?"  
  
Jonathan shook his head, turning around and nestling himself further into the warmth of his mother’s side. "Figures," Lisa laughed, "he's not much of a morning person."  
  
"Like someone I know."  
  
"Of course."  
  
Waylon smiled. He had to get going if he was going to make it in time, Lake County being a long drive out, but it was becoming harder and harder to leave. He'd never been away from his family before. Not for this long at least. He had to go two weeks without a fussing infant or a four year old crawling into bed in the middle of the night, his cold feet pressing against the small of Waylon's back. It was going to be unbearable.  
  
Maybe Lisa was right, in a way. He could just kick off his shoes and call up Murkoff and tell them to shove it. There were other jobs out there. Maybe not as better paying, but he liked to think he had options.  
  
But sparing a look at his family, curled up against each other, comfortable in the glow of the early morning light, he understood that he had a job as a father to step out of that door. Because sometimes, in life, you had to make sacrifices.  
  
He waved goodbye as he opened the door, Lisa already dozing off as the TV played the weather forecast in the background. She smiled softly. "See you soon, Waylon. Love you."  
  
"Love you, too."  
  
 _He should have stayed._

\- & -

He’s coming to. The buzzing of flies. The swaying of a dim light bulb that illuminates the splattering of blood decorating splintered wood. The writhing of maggots burying into dead and rotting meat that he swears he can hear if he just listens closely enough. A hand drags its way down his leg and Waylon realizes he’s splayed open to the cold, musky air, dirty and exposed. 

“You have amazing bone structure,” the man breathes, his rumbling voice low in almost a purr. “Such soft skin. You’re going to be beautiful.” 

Waylon struggles against his crude restraints, his body sore and trembling and burning with nausea and the man above him, with a scarred and familiar face and glowing eyes, won’t stop his caressing. “You know, a woman has to suffer some things but just try to… endure. For my sake. For the sake of our children. It won’t take long. A few snips of the flesh here and here,” he gestures to Waylon’s bare chest encasing his thrumming heart and quickening breath, “and cut away anything -- vulgar.” He leans casually over Waylon’s waist, regarding him with a wave of disgust as his manic eyes glance over Waylon’s shrinking genitals. Bile rises in Waylon’s throat, flashes of other patients being drilled open, cut and scraped until a madman deems them fit flitting through his mind in a dull beat against his temples. 

He continues, tightening Waylon’s binds with a blissed voice. “A soft place to welcome my seed. To grow my family.”

I’m going to die, Waylon thinks so simply and with such casualness it was almost laughable, a thought that had crossed his mind more than a few times since he woke up in the bowels of hell and began his run. But the weight of it, the sheer truth of it, of dying naked and his most valuable parts of him cut away like they meant nothing at all caused his eyes to well with burning tears. 

And the man continued on, the screeching of a buzz saw drowning out his words and Waylon convulsed against the table, sobs and choked screams racking his body. “Please,” he begged, tears and spit and snot running down his face, “please, god, I beg of you, please don’t cut me, please.” The saw edged closer to him, cracking away at the table. Waylon feels flecks of it fall onto his body in a crude dusting of snowfall and louder he screams. 

“Please, I don’t want to die, please,” the buzz saw ceased and Waylon shuddered against the still and quiet air. “Please, please, I’m begging you, don’t kill me.” He turned into the crook of his arm and sobbed into his trembling shoulder, words of mercy falling from his lips without a clear destination. 

A hand comes to rest at his cheek, burning with warmth and calluses cutting against his soft skin. “Darling,” he rumbles, voice soft and low. “Darling, believe me when I say I have no intention of letting you die. I want you to become what you were always meant to be.” His hand trails lower, closing around Waylon’s neck in a loose hold that softly directs Waylon’s gaze to the man’s eyes, his raw scars. A sob sticks in Waylon’s throat. 

“But the others,” those horrible, misshapen men that decorated the halls of the Vocational Block, a mockery of femininity and motherhood, it’s all Waylon can see as he pleads for the man to spare the sanctity of his own body, “the others didn’t survive. You tried to change them and they died.” 

“Yes,” and the man has the audacity to smile as if recalling a fond memory, and Waylon feels the chill of ice splinter down his back. “But the others weren’t strong enough, my love. You’re different. You’re not like them.”

Waylon shakes his head, the tears falling freely and without mercy and his voice comes out brutalized and weak. “I’m not strong. I’m hurt.”

The man casts a glance down, down until he sees Waylon’s leg propped up onto the table in a make-shift stirrup, bruised and bloody and nasty looking enough to give the man pause. “I’m _hurt_. I won’t survive it. I’ll die.” Waylon reaches himself up as much as he can against his restraints, silently begging the man to look at him and _see_ , for the love of god see him and see what he is about to do. And when the man finally looks there is almost something like clarity, light and fluttering ghosting past his gaze, and Waylon leans up even more still, fighting against the creaking pull of his body, until their faces were a shuddering breaths away from one another. “I don’t want to die. Don’t let me die.” 

Silently the man moves, undoing ropes with careful grace and steady hands and he pulls Waylon up with all the mannerisms of a gentleman. Slowly his hands come to rest upon Waylon’s tear-stained cheeks and wipe away the slick grime that had gathered there. “I would never hurt you, darling. I would never.” And his breathless words are uttered with all of the sincerity of a madman and Waylon shudders a laugh that sounds haunted and broken. The tears flow once more. 

“Thank you,” he whispers, resting his head against the man’s dirty vest where blood and dirt have crusted into the fabric. He finds solace in it, almost, his mind too battered to fight against it. He just wishes he could stop crying. 

The man tilts Waylon’s face up, gently, so gently, and Waylon has to force himself to stay awake and look him in the eyes. And they’re darker now, he wearily finds the glow of the Engine an almost forgotten thing. “What is your name, my love? I’m embarrassed to say I don’t even know it.” And a flush gathers at the man’s pale skin and Waylon smiles a strange and genuine smile. 

“Waylon,” he whispers, his tears flowing into the corners of his mouth. “My name is Waylon.” 

“Waylon,” the man breathes, feeling the word slide between his lips and coat his tongue like a sweet and fragrant tea. “Waylon. Such a beautiful name, my dear.” 

Waylon falls back forward, wrapping his sore arms around a strong neck with a pulse that quickens under his touch. He brings his lips to the shell of the man’s ear and asks, “What’s your name?”

The man tilts his head until their faces are so close once again, and Waylon can smell mint and blood ghost over his lips and bile settles at the back of his throat. 

“My name is Eddie, love.”

Waylon smiles and closes his eyes, the ink of the Engine glowing and dancing and pulsating in the darkness enough to make him dizzy. “Thank you for saving me, Eddie.”

Waylon feels a kiss slide so gently against his cheek that perhaps it never happened at all. I’m going to die here, he thinks. And then he sleeps. 


	2. Chapter 2

When Waylon dreams he dreams of bloody halls and blurry faces. He dreams of a dry tongue snaking its way into his ear and licking at his brain, of knives and gaping wounds and mangled bodies. When Waylon dreams he dreams of Lisa, slick with blood and sweat as her beautiful body contorts and convulses with the birth of a man crawling out of her torn sex as he screams of rape and madness. 

In the dark edges of Waylon’s dreams there is the sound of laughter. 

Waylon comes to with the slur of a drunk, his body sore and exhausted beyond its limits as he writhes against the thin mattress, silently praying for the warmth of his wife and children at his side but finding nothing but cold sweat dirtying the sheets. His body shakes as he raises himself up onto his elbows, his bleary eyes attempting to adjust to the dimly lit room but finding it nearly impossible to comprehend his surroundings. Absently he reaches for the camera that was usually tucked at his side but finds it long gone, his hands empty of its weight and he realizes he’s bare of anything save the bandages wrapped taught around his leg. 

Pain still hums from under his skin but if he fools himself it’s an almost bearable thing now. His fingers skitter over the wrappings and he finds blood long dried and flaking away from freshly cleaned skin. Waylon swallows around the thick lump that had gathered at his throat. He blinks and he feels Jeremy Blaire’s hands at his waist. He blinks and Andrew is moaning against his cheek as his breath licks at the shell of his ear. He blinks and the waves of the Engine wash over him, consume him.

“Darling?” 

Waylon startles and falls back against the bed, cowering towards the edge until his back is pressed against the cold concrete wall. I was alone, Waylon thinks frantically, and the beating of his heart thunders violently against his head. But there Eddie stood at his side, towering over Waylon with his cold blue eyes. Waylon thinks they glow in the darkness of the room but then he blinks again and they’re as dull and listless as his own, Eddie’s expression unreadable as he moves closer. 

“It’s good that you’re awake, my dear. I was honestly beginning to worry there for a moment. Now let me have a look at that leg of yours.” He reaches over and Waylon shrinks back, but Eddie’s hand falls to the bedside and clicks on a desk lamp, illuminating the room with its invasive glow. His gaze falls to Waylon’s leg and he smiles that strange little smile. “It looks like the bleeding has finally stopped, darling. But we’ll need to change out those bandages. They seem to have outlived their use, don’t you agree?” The bed dips beneath his solid weight and his hand reaches forward once more and now there’s nowhere for Waylon to move. So instead he offers up his sore leg and Eddie drags it carefully over his lap.

Eddie’s hand is warm against Waylon’s skin as his fingers move with delicate precision over the gash at his leg. Pain flares up his thigh every so often and his muscles twitch involuntarily and Eddie takes hold of his knee with frightening strength, the soft click of his tongue a quiet reprimand before he continues. He nods before looking up and his smile is gone. “I’m afraid it’s much more serious than I thought, Waylon. You’re going to need stitches in order for this to heal properly.”

Waylon pales. 

Eddie looks back down and sighs. “If we leave it as is it will only get worse. You wouldn’t want that, love.” A calm and strong squeeze against Waylon’s knee. “Would you?” 

Waylon eyes the strange patchwork of Eddie’s vest, sees the splotches of blood that had dyed itself into the fabric and distantly, if he strains himself, if he really listens against the grim silence of the room, he can hear a man sobbing from somewhere far and beyond. He curls the thin bed sheet across his hips where Eddie has refused to look. He swallows. “No. No I wouldn’t.” 

A look of relief crosses Eddie’s mangled face before he moves away, humming to himself as he walks over to rummage around a dented locker leaning awkwardly against the wall. Waylon turns away, ignoring the defiant throb of his leg and instead focusing on the small room before him: a computer desk piled high with manila folders bursting at the seams, a dusty black futon, half a dozen file cabinets and bookshelves shoved this way and that, and a small kitchenette settled at the very corner. If Waylon had to hazard a guess then this room might have once been a half-assed Nurse’s Station before Eddie had taken up residence. But he finds that his camera is nowhere to be seen.

He clenches his fist tightly against the mattress. 

Eddie returns to his seat on the bed with a small bag in hand and begins laying out the contents one by one. Waylon trembles despite himself. “It’s such a shame, my dear, having to mar your beautiful skin. I hate doing this to you. But I need you to get better. I need you...” His hands seem to move of their own accord as he speaks, carefully caressing the smooth skin of Waylon’s leg and travelling up, up, up until the tips of his fingers meet the edge of the sheet sitting high on Waylon’s thighs. They stay there, unmoving, and Waylon doesn’t dare even breathe as Eddie’s face blanks. And this time Waylon is sure of it when there is a glow to those crazed blue eyes. Eddie pales and the wide grip of his hand tightens enough to bruise. 

Waylon grimaces against the shocking force and carefully slides his hand over Eddie’s, trying to soothe his fingers against the rough grain of his gloves. “It’s okay, Eddie,” he whispers, his clouded mind racing to find the right words that will be enough to keep himself intact. “It’s okay. I just need you to help me get better.”

Eddie relaxes as his hands fall away and he begins to smile. “Of course, love. I can help you get better.” 

Waylon has never needed stitches for anything before. He supposes he had always had a careful and perhaps even cowardly nature. He didn’t climb the aging sycamore at the end of the block on a dare, and he didn’t race down a rocky hill on his Schwinn. He was a quiet kid who lingered inside on sunny days and directed his attention towards books and his computer screen. A part of him wants to laugh as Eddie pulls the thread tightly through his skin while he keeps humming that fucking song of his and Waylon is choking back a sob. Living a quiet life with years of coding under his belt never prepared him for this. 

I should have fallen out of a tree more, he thinks. 

When Eddie cleans up Waylon’s leg it looks both for the worse and better all at once. The bleeding had started up once again and had to be wiped away repeatedly with sanitizing wipes but at least the exposed muscle and fat were sewn away with impressive stitchwork. Eddie wraps his leg back up with clean bandages and ties it off with a smile before looking up at Waylon, his expression soft and expectant and Waylon forces himself to look away, his stomach turning cold with nausea. 

“Th-thank you, Eddie.” 

Eddie is quiet as he gathers up his things and Waylon doesn’t spare him a glance as he moves away to walk back over to the locker, instead focusing on the cracks in the wall and the pulled threads of the mattress. He wraps the bed sheet tighter around himself, suddenly feeling the chill of the room begin to choke him. 

Eddie carefully lies down clothes and another blanket atop his flat pillow, smoothing it down. His face has fallen somber and he looks to want to speak, or perhaps merely bid farewell, but Waylon regards him with such a look of despair that silence falls in an agonizing blanket. And then he’s gone from the room. 

The clothes he is given are not the same dirty patient uniform from before, and it was foolish of him to believe he’d somehow have his old clothes back. No, instead he’s given a gray dress that looks to have been sewn from several cotton shirts pulled together with a dark thread, with long sleeves and a high neck. A part of him wants to refuse it, to throw it against the corner of the room and curl himself at the edge of the bed while his hot tears would fall once more. He was never one to cry so easily before but it was shocking how easily they came now, in heavy and dreadful waves. It was just so much easier to succumb. But he was cold. And he was fucking tired of being naked. 

The dress fits him better than he expects, a little tight around the shoulders but the discomfort is manageable. It slides a few inches past his thighs and he finds himself tugging it down even as he sits. It was clear Eddie took his measurements while he was unconscious, as well as cleaned him, but Waylon feels a wry smile pull at his lips at how Eddie still made sure to suit the dress to his own taste. Or perhaps he was trying to bite back at his disgust.

He makes a feeble attempt to put weight on his leg but the pain flares with an intensity that almost grounds him to the dirty floor. The tears come all too quickly. 

He pushes himself back down onto the bed and drags the spare blanket across himself and notices something dark fall from its folds. He leans over the bed and there, laying on the floor of the dim room, is a pair of small, thin underwear. He reaches for them and feels that they carry the same handmade stitching as his dress. 

They remind him of the pairs Lisa used to walk around the house in in the early mornings, wearing his old band t-shirts with warm cups of coffee in her hands. Boy shorts, she had called them, and she had once offered him a pair of her own with a smile and a wink as his hands casually maneuvered down her waistband. 

I’ll have to take you up on that one day, he laughed. 

“ _Here comes the bride. Here comes your bride, Mr. Gluskin._ ”

He balls the fabric up into his fist and shoves it between the mattress and the bed frame. 

Today isn’t that fucking day. 

\- & -

Eddie comes back again in mostly silence, never speaking but humming his persistent tune as his hands would maneuver Waylon’s leg this way and that and changing out his bandages before leaving again. Sometimes he would stay gone for hours, or what Waylon assumed were hours, sometimes for only a few moments as he would return with cans of congealed food and small bottles of water. Waylon accepted them but realized his hunger was a fading thing. Eddie, with that little smile of his, would leave again. Waylon would only take a few sips of his water and lie back down, staring up at the ceiling. Sometimes he slept. Most times he didn’t. 

After the fourth time Waylon couldn’t take the silence anymore. Because the silence wasn’t true, because beyond the door of his cluttered little room he could still hear men scream and a buzzsaw roar to life. Because beyond the yellow glow of his only light he could hear blood drip onto the floor.

“I thought you stopped.” 

Eddie pauses his humming. He doesn’t respond right away, kneeling at the ground with his hands poised around Waylon’s leg, his face unreadable. “Stop?” His tone is light but there’s something festering beneath his words. Waylon treads carefully.

“You’re still cutting them. Aren’t you?”

Eddie laughs a bitter thing before resuming his work, his methodic twist and pull of sore muscle malleable beneath his palms. “I never said I would stop, my love.”

Waylon tries to bite back the trembling he feels beginning to rack his body. “Then why are you still doing it?”

“To improve myself. Practice does indeed make perfect, dear Waylon.” His fingers reach up to catch the side of Waylon’s face, his thumb tracing a trembling bottom lip. “And perfection must be achieved for the both of us.” 

In a quick and fluid motion Eddie pulls Waylon into his arms and Waylon feels a cry burn at his throat, the throb of his leg screaming at him to alleviate the pain as he is forced to stand on his toes to meet the intense gaze of Eddie Gluskin. “Soon enough,” he continues, blind to Waylon’s whimpers as his eyes glow with a ferocious light, “we will be joined as one, as husband and wife, and my seed will blossom inside of your womb and you will birth a life of our own making.”

Eddie crushes their bodies together and he is solid insanity clothed in blood. His mouth moves against Waylon’s ear with slick heat. “You have no idea what this wretched body of yours does to me, Waylon. How hard it is to restrain myself from your wanton flesh. The scent of your arbor is enough to seduce me into taking you. But you said yourself that you’re weak. And as long as that foul and loathsome flesh hangs from between your legs you will remain so. And the mother of my children will not be weak.” The disgust that drips from his words pours from his mouth like rancid saliva against Waylon’s shoulder. 

Suddenly Waylon is being swept along with remarkable strength as he is dragged through the door of his room for the first time in what must have been days. The stitches in his leg were tugging with a dangerous tightness and he could feel the warmth of his blood slowly trickling down to his feet. 

He doesn’t recognize the long hallway that is littered with blood and debris, and Eddie is talking again, even singing again, but no matter how hard Waylon tries to focus on his words all he can hear is the whirr of the Engine humming against his ear. 

A putrid, vomitous stench begins to waft through the hall. Soon enough they reach a pair of heavy wooden doors that Eddie opens up with one of the keys rattling inside of his vest pocket, his grip still holding firm upon Waylon’s arm. Inside Waylon is greeted with what he is sure is something that dances on the edge of artistry and madness. 

Above him hangs the still bodies of dozens upon dozens of men, perhaps even a hundred. Their heads disappear into the darkness of the rafters and their genitals are mutilated beyond comprehension, some left with gaping holes in their place. Thrown haphazardly across the linoleum are the scattered remains of hacked off arms and legs, and around him is the buzzing of incessant flies that he feels trying to crawl into his ear. 

With the last remains of his strength he pulls himself from Eddie’s hold and falls to the floor, emptying his stomach of what little food he held and feeling the burn of acid sting his throat. His ears ring from the violence of his own convulsions and all he can hear beyond that are the flies and the sway of the ropes holding up Eddie’s sickening decoration.

Waylon’s head is yanked back by his throat and he is forced to look upon the mass grave above him. Eddie’s mouth is against his neck and his lips play against the quickening of Waylon’s pulse. “They were weak, Waylon. They fooled me, enticed me with their swaying hips and sweet words, played me into believing that what I felt was true. Was honest. But they were not meant for the beauty of motherhood and matrimony. No, these foul whores were meant to hang like useless meat for the flies to burrow. Weakness has no place in my home. Weakness will not carry my blood.” He turns Waylon’s face until their eyes meet and Waylon feels as if he is plummeting into dangerous depths as he stares into a glowing void. “Do you understand me, darling?”

Waylon doesn’t speak. If he speaks he will scream and once he screams he fears he will never stop. So instead he nods his head and eventually the tears begin their flow. Perhaps if he cried just enough he could drown them both inside of this abysmal place.

Eddie doesn’t smile but he leans his forehead against Waylon’s and shuts his eyes, as if trying to focus his thoughts on something that Waylon can’t even begin to understand. After a moment Eddie speaks again and his voice is so, so strange to Waylon’s ears: “Sometimes when I look at you, Waylon, I feel as if the darkness never touched me. I’m almost foolish enough to believe that’s love.” 

Eddie pulls back and his body moves slow and heavy with exhaustion. He turns away. “Go back to your room, darling. You need your rest.” 

Waylon can’t bring himself to leave and his body fights with pain and adrenaline and exhaustion. He wants to run away. He wants to scream. He wants to die right there with all the rest of them. But he chooses instead to limp away from the gymnasium, hugging the peeling wall of the hallway and leaving Eddie to his travesty and the battling chaos of his own mind. 

He finds his way back to his little room and he falls apart onto the bed. All he can see are those men crowding into the ceiling every time he closes his eyes, with their damaged bodies left to rot with the rest of the asylum, with the minds of all who inhabit it. When he closes his eyes he can see himself hang, his body only fit for the flies. 


	3. Chapter 3

Waylon lets the drooling flow of tepid water fall over him, the layer of blood and grime that had sunk into his skin slowly choking into the drain. He could feel something like relief bubbling in his chest even as he shivered from how quickly the water turned cold. He would rather bathe in ice and let the bitterness splinter into his skin than feel blood dry beneath his fingernails ever again. He sunk down against the cracked porcelain tiles and felt the water pooling beside him along with old soap and the filth that trailed behind him wherever he went, like a snail of dust and decay. He dropped his face into his arms and closed his eyes to nothing but the water. 

Before long his shower ended with a dull clang from the pipes and Waylon, against his better wishes, looked out from his little slice of darkness he had made for himself, his eyes dried and blurry and aching. There Eddie was, his quiet and looming form kneeling beside him as he held a large and musty towel in his arms. 

Waylon smiled. “Is that for me,” he whispered through chapped lips and Eddie’s gaze shifted curiously towards Waylon’s mouth. 

Eddie smiled as he reached forward, wrapping the towel around Waylon. “You’ll catch your death like this, darling. And then where would I be without you?” He dragged his hand through Waylon’s growing hair and Waylon smelled a tinge of copper coming from his leather gloves. 

“You’d be here,” Waylon sighed. “And I would be someone else.” 

Eddie’s expression erodes away into something quieter, frail. Tired. He moves away to leave and doesn’t spare a glance back into the room, leaving Waylon in the quiet of his own solitude until time ebbs away into a dank and still coldness that he can no longer stand. 

Waylon steps out of the washroom wearing his faded dress and the thin sweater Eddie had given him from a body Waylon preferred to not have seen from a variant that had made the grave mistake of intruding into the Vocational Block. Instead he ignored the blood that had dried too deeply into the cuffs and tucked his hands away into his pockets and wandered down the hall. 

His leg had healed, not completely nor beautifully, leaving behind a mangled and twisted scar to his flesh that ached him when he stood for too long or walked too far. The warmth soothed him but that was harder to come by these days when the shameless beast of a Colorado winter blew down the halls. Waylon was left to ache in the cold, with blankets too thin and too torn to provide any protection from the constant bitter chill, his bed empty save for his own shivering body. 

Because Eddie didn’t touch him. Not since his bandages had come off for the last time. No more than a stroke to his hair or a brush to his cheek before he would leave Waylon and venture out into the dark halls on his own. No, Eddie Gluskin was ever the gentleman of his own convoluted making, who left his bride-to-be in his cluttered bedroom suite with nothing but the shadows to keep him company. 

And such strange shadows they were. 

As he walked down the twisted halls of the secluded block he could hear something he’d never heard before coming from the vents. A sound that had never, in all the weeks of his entrapment inside of the asylum, ever come from those vents. The wailing echoes of a baby. 

Waylon stopped in his tracks and stared, feeling his stomach drop abruptly down to his knees. That was a baby, he was sure of it. His thoughts were fuzzy and his memory often came with blurry faces but he can remember the sleepless nights he had awoken to Ethan’s hoarse cries from colic, coughing up and choking on his own spit during the worst of it. Waylon would rock him in his arms until long into the night, humming songs he doesn’t recall now.

No matter what songs that cross his mind these days he hums the same tune of the groom’s anthem. 

He steadies himself onto a stretcher and hoists himself up into the vent, his weight much lighter than from before but his muscles weak from disuse. My dress is even beginning to fit me looser, he thought absently. He crawled through, shaking the spider webs from his feet as the echoes grew but only so faintly. The vent was leading him beyond the Vocational Block, through the bolted doors and curving into bloody hallways. Waylon couldn’t tell where he was going, he couldn’t remember, his internal map of the hospital scribbled over and faded. 

Just then a grate gave out from under him and he fell onto the floor with a sharp crack to the back of his head. The world spun and his vision blurred and dancing at the edges of his sight was the Engine. Still the crying continued, pulling him up from the dirty ground and leading him onto his unsteady feet. 

Into the hall he stumbled over bodies that laid crooked and broken against the walls. Flies and maggots danced in his wake. He forced himself to not look for too long, swallowing the bile down his throat and keeping his head up, following the pathway of the vent. The crying was becoming louder the farther along he walked, down another hall, and another, and another. 

The few men that passed him by were as familiar as the walking dead, their groaning voices speaking of a fire, servants of god that died in the walls. 

“In the walls, in the walls, in the walls…” 

It felt familiar, the way the pieces of a puzzle spilled onto the table felt familiar. A picture he could put together if he would just give himself the time. 

The crying grew and grew until he could feel it pounding behind his eyes. He was close. He knew it. He had to be. 

Finally he came upon the locked door of the Security Room and the crying wails of a baby shook it nearly off its hinges. Waylon twisted the handle but it refused to give, as if the force writhing on the other side was trying to keep him out. He threw his body against the door until he could feel an angry bruise blossoming across his skin. The baby cried ever louder and he threw himself again. He threw himself again and again. He roared from the pain but it didn’t matter, he needed to get inside. His son was in there. 

Wasn’t he?

The door threw itself open before he even had a chance to reconnect and he tumbled to the floor face first and he felt the warmth of blood trickling down his face. 

The crying had stopped. The world sat quiet and still as he drew himself up, slowly, painfully. 

Waylon looked around and the room was empty save for a wall of black screens and a rusted pair of lockers, the only lights coming from the flickering fluorescents outside in the hall. There was no baby. There never could have been inside of a place where death festered in every dark corner and stunk the walls. There was no baby. And he was alone. 

He could feel the bubbling of laughter choking in his throat, a hysteric and hollow thing. But he couldn’t stop. As he bled and ached inside of that shuddering darkness he laughed until he cried, and he cried for such a long time until his tears and the blood from his face puddled onto the floor. He was alone. His family was gone. His sanity was slipping away with them. Nothing to keep him company except for shadows and the rotting dead. He had blindly followed along to the impossible and now he was stuck in the corner of the asylum that he had never traveled to before, and he knew the more he wandered on the worse his leg would become and he’d be stuck, a feast for the men who were left. 

Behind him the door slammed shut with a sudden burst of cold air that sent the hem of Waylon’s dress swaying. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. Something was emerging from the darkness, spreading and pulsing and breathing behind him. His mind flashed to those images that played in static when Jeremy Blaire had him succumb to the Engine, where a sinister black wind carried the scent of blood and left behind nothing but gore on the wall. 

It was already too late, he knew that better than anyone, but still he ran to the locker in a futile attempt at keeping himself alive just a few seconds longer. He swung open the door and fell through and onto a cold hardwood floor with a dull thud. His heart thundered against his chest and the blood roared inside of his ears. The world spun and it felt like it took so long for him to focus. What was it that he was focusing on? A hardwood floor. A dying fireplace. Walls decorated with pictures that were out of ill-defined, blurry. A quiet corner of a forgotten house. 

He steadied himself up onto trembling limbs, weak and unsure of himself. A room. A room that couldn’t exist inside of the asylum, with windows that overlooked out into a winter storm that raged with a ferocity that shook the glass. He pressed his fingers to it and felt the cold chill him to his blood. God, he thought with a quiet and reserved fear, dear god I think it finally killed me. 

Beside him a telephone rang, piercing the stillness of the room with its shriek. It rang for such a long time before he finally brought himself to answer it. 

“Mom,” he found himself whispering into the phone, unconscious to what he was saying and why. 

“Waylon,” a voice came back, soft and dry with sleep, a voice he hadn’t heard in such a long, long time. He felt tears begin to warm his cheeks. “Waylon, sweetie, is everything alright?” 

Outside thunder cracked the dark sky. 

Before he could answer, before he could hear that sweet voice again that only ever visited him in his deepest dreams, a pounding came from the door that led outside. Waylon startled and the phone dropped from his hand to the floor. “Mr. Park,” a man bellowed from the other side, a bitter laugh erupting from the darkness. 

No, no, Waylon thought in a panic, no, this isn’t right. 

“Mr. Park,” the voice of Jeremy Blaire yelled, the door rattling violently from a familiar and monstrous force. “Don’t be stupid, Mr. Park. You know what they say about those who don’t learn from the past, don’t you, Mr. Park? Don’t be fucking stupid.”

Waylon wretched his trembling body out of his fear-driven stupor and ran down a hall that seemed to form before his very eyes, a memory he didn’t realize he ever held, locking himself inside of an empty bedroom. He needed to hide. He needed to get away. His mind raced and stumbled for a solution when he heard the first door break down and crack onto the floor. Fuck. 

He dropped down onto the floor and slid beneath the small bed, shoving himself into the farthest corner and trying to blend away with the shadows. 

Quiet steps echoed down the hall, leather shoes soaked with rain squeaking onto the hardwood floors. Closer and closer they stepped until they reached his door and stopped. The world stood still with the man on the other side and Waylon couldn’t even bring himself to breathe. 

“You know how this ends, Mr. Park.” 

The lock simply clicked and the door slowly creaked open. 

Get me out of here, he silently begged the darkness. 

Jeremy hummed a song so familiar to Waylon’s ears that a choked sob escaped Waylon’s throat despite himself. Jeremy stopped in his tracks and a sharp laugh fractured the quiet bedroom. He stepped closer towards the bed and Waylon shrank further away. A hand reached for him and Waylon screamed. 

Waylon was yanked from the confines of the shadows and he thrashed about. The world spun out of his control and he fought against it with everything he had -- what little of it was left. He screamed until his voice grew hoarse and spots dotted his vision. 

Warm hands held him down and a deep voice bled through the violence and the static that endlessly roared inside of his body. “Waylon,” the voice begged and it was so hard for Waylon to hear. “Waylon, my love, Waylon, please.” 

Eternity passed before Waylon grew weak and fell limp to the floor. It took even longer for the world to shift slowly back into focus. He found his cluttered little bedroom with its upturned desk and sagging bed frame and dim yellow light. He found Eddie, with shallow cuts dotting his scarred face and panic in his gaze. Waylon could feel the blood begin to congeal under his cracked fingernails. His voice cracked as he whispered Eddie’s name with a tired inflection of relief. 

Eddie’s piercing blue stare softened and he drew his fingers through the flaking blood that had gathered at Waylon’s cheeks, cupping his face and Waylon felt himself burning with a nauseous fever wherever he touched. He leaned into Eddie’s hands and felt himself begin to weep. 

Eddie drew himself down onto Waylon’s chest where it beat with a thundering heart, a drowning storm. “Where did you go,” he whispered to Waylon, to the nothing of the room. “Where did you fade away to?” 

I went back home, Waylon wanted to say but stopped himself, thinking better of it and instead choosing to run his hands through Eddie’s hair.  
  
Behind him he heard the odd click and whirr of a handheld camera coming to life. 


End file.
